Part 40

“What would you?” she coldly asks.

“Tear out your tongue!” answers he, with a rude laugh. Two of the executioner’s assistants then seizing her, grasp her head.

This time Eleonore defends herself--despair lends her strength. Freeing herself from the grasp of these barbarous executioners, she falls upon her knees, and, raising her bloody arms toward heaven, implores the mercy of God: glancing at the spectators, she implores their pity and their aid; turning her eyes toward the proud imperial palace, where Elizabeth sits enthroned, she begs there for grace and mercy.

But as all remained silent, and as neither God nor man, nor yet the empress, had mercy upon her, a wild rage took possession of Eleonore’s soul.

Raising her eyes toward heaven with flaming glances, she exclaimed:

“Woe to this merciless Elizabeth! Woe to this woman who has no compassion for another woman! What she now does to me, do Thou also to her, my God and Lord! Grant that she be flayed as she has now flayed me! Grant her a daughter, and let that daughter before her mother’s eyes suffer what I now suffer, O my God! Woe to Elizabeth, and woe to you, ye cowardly slaves, who can look on and see a woman flayed and tortured! Shame and perdition to Russia and its Empress Elizabeth!”

These were Eleonore’s last words. With a wild rage her executioners seized her for the purpose of tearing out her tongue. And when that was accomplished, and her husband and son had suffered a similar martyrdom, all three were placed upon a kibitka, to be conveyed to Siberia.

Eleonore could no longer speak with her tongue, but her eyes spoke, and those eyes continued to repeat the prayer for vengeance she had addressed to Heaven: “Grant to this Empress Elizabeth a daughter, and let that daughter’s sufferings be like mine.”

A WEDDING

The people dispersed. The great returned to their palaces, and also Alexis Razumovsky, who, that he might not excite the anger of the empress, had likewise attended the execution, returned to the imperial palace.

Elizabeth was standing before a large Venetian mirror, scrutinizing a toilet which she had to-day changed for the fourth time.

“Well,” she asked of Alexis, as he entered, “was it an interesting spectacle? Was the handsome countess soundly whipped?”

And, while so asking, she was smilingly occupied in attaching a purple flower to her hair.

“She was flayed,” laconically replied Alexis. “Her blood streamed down a back that was as red as your beautiful lips, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth offered him her lips to kiss.

“Now,” she jestingly asked, “who is now the handsomest woman in my realm?”

“You are and always were!” responded Alexis, embracing her.

“And now tell me,” said she, with curiosity, “what did this proud countess do? How did she behave, what did she say?”

Alexis, seating himself upon a tabouret at her feet, related to her all about the fair Eleonore, and what a terrible curse she uttered.

“Ah, nonsense!” replied Elizabeth, shrugging her shoulders, “How can one make such a stupid prayer to God! I shall never marry, and therefore never have a daughter to be scourged with the knout.”

But while thus speaking, her eyes suddenly became fixed and her cheek pale. She laid her trembling hand upon her heart--tears gushed from her eyes.

Under her heart she had felt a movement of a new and mysterious life! Heaven itself seemed to contradict her words! Elizabeth felt that she was a mother, and Eleonore’s words now filled her with awe and terror!

Fainting, she sank into Razumovsky’s arms.

A few weeks later, a great and magnificent court festival was celebrated at the imperial palace at St. Petersburg. It was not enough that Elizabeth had chosen a successor in the person of Peter, Duke of Holstein, she must also give this successor a wife, that the throne might be fortified and assured by a numerous progeny.

She chose for him the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the young and beautiful Sophia Augusta, who, embracing the Greek religion, received the name of Catharine.

It was the marriage festival of this young German princess with the heir to the Russian throne which was celebrated in the imperial palace at St. Petersburg--a festival of splendor and enthusiasm, as it was attended by two women of the most exciting beauty, Elizabeth the present and Catharine the future empress--the one gorgeous with the splendor of the present, the other irradiated with the glory of the future. People looked at the fair youthful face of Catharine, and sought to read in her majestic high forehead the hopes that Russia might cherish of her! It was, therefore, a festival of the present and future that was there and then celebrated, and the magnates humbly prostrated themselves before this new star, and threw themselves upon the earth before the ever-new sun of imperial majesty which shone upon them in the person of Elizabeth.

Catharine with a joyful spirit and a proud smile laid her hand in that of Peter, and as she stepped with him to the altar she thought: “I do this that I may one day be empress! and as I can reach that position in no other way--well, then, let them call me the wife of this under-aged boy! I will suffer it until the time when I shall no longer suffer, but command.”

With such thoughts did Catharine become the wife of the Grand-duke Peter, who, as he with a loud and solemn “yes” vowed eternal truth to his young wife, looked at the Countess Woronzow, and both exchanged a stolen smile and a glowing glance of love.